Kubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 is available now, final release will be ready on October 2017

The Kubuntu community has announced availability of Kubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1, first development release of upcoming stable Ubuntu based GNU/Linux distribution featuring modern plasma desktop. This release will be known by the code name Artful Aardvark, just like any other 17.10 release in Ubuntu family.

Kubuntu 17.10 ships an experimental preview of features that we can expect from final release. Since the development and feature freeze activity is going on, it is highly likely to find bugs in this release. So it is not recommended to use this development release on production machines.

Artful Aardvark (17.10) Alpha 1 images are now available for testing so we can release the alpha on Thursday. The Kubuntu team will be releasing 17.10 in October.
This is the first spin in preparation for the Alpha 1 pre-release. Plasma 5, the new generation of KDE's desktop has been developed to make it smoother to use while retaining the familiar setup. The tenth set of updates to Plasma 5 is the default in this version of Kubuntu.

Kubuntu comes with KDE Applications 16.12.3
containing all your favorite apps from KDE. This is the 16.12.3 update
with bugfixes and translation updates. Most applications have been
ported to KDE Frameworks 5 but those which aren't should fit in seamlessly.